


Dead men don't wassail

by keysburg



Series: Dead spies tell no lies [2]
Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Gen, Holidays, and working the night shift will really mess you up even if you're not pretending to be dead, just a little mopey, make me mopey, not "kill the favorite characters" mopey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-10 15:15:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8922055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keysburg/pseuds/keysburg
Summary: Takes place in the months after Jack Thompson is Dead*





	

The problem with L.A. was that it didn’t have proper seasons. 

That’s how it snuck up on him. 

The hints were there, of course, but it was surprisingly easy to overlook them. Jack had returned from New Mexico to find a new kind of half-life. He was still dead, officially, but he might be the busiest dead man ever. After the report was filed--in Sousa’s filing cabinet and nowhere else, yet--one thing after another cropped up. There was always someone to trail, someone needing surveillance coverage, and always somewhere to slink in and reconnoiter without looking like a cop. He might accuse Sousa of taking advantage of his reluctance to return to the land of the living, except for one thing.

He liked it. Jack liked the work he was getting and he liked not having to direct others. Most of all, he liked not having to listen to his father tell him he should be doing more.

Being busy and nocturnal at least half the time, it was therefore easy to ignore the weeks drifting by and the colored lights filtering into the already bright L.A. nights. He might spend a lot of nights sitting in a car, but the radio stayed off and the scanner stayed on. 

Then one morning he popped into a corner shop on his way home after another night of surveillance. The front of the day’s newspaper caught his eye. It boasted a picture of the tree in Rockefeller center and the headline TREE LIGHTING FINALLY COMMENCES AFTER RECORD SNOWSTORM. 

Suddenly he noticed the bells on the store radio, the huge stack of candy cane boxes, and the tinsel garland hanging from the season. It was only a week until Christmas. 

Now he couldn’t help but see the decorations everywhere as he drove home. Lawns boasting grass much too green for late December also displayed Nativity scenes or Santa in his sleigh. The shiny decorations and fake snow looked so very incongruent against the palm trees and mild morning. 

A memory came unbidden to Jack of another bright Pacific morning just before Iwo Jima. Gam-Gam’s letter had been written on Christmas night and apparently mailed the very next day, but it had taken weeks to reach him. He had looked out over the blue water as he tried to picture the celebration he had missed, so carefully described for him in her letter. 

The same sense of disconnect plagued him now as he went to lie in his darkened bedroom, his fan slowly oscillating. If he listened it sounded almost like the wind howling between the buildings of New York City. As he drifted to sleep he thought about how much he hated trudging through cold and wet snow, no matter how pretty it looked.

 _It was no wonder I forgot about Christmas,_ he thought when he woke up. The late afternoon sun was peeking through his heavy curtains and he contemplated it groggily. Being half nocturnal was disorienting at best. 

A quick workout with the heavy bag in the spare bedroom served to wake him up. Getting his blood pumping let his body know it was time to go, circadian rhythms be damned. Jack followed it up with a cold shower. Normally refreshing, this time it put a distinct chill up his back. It followed him as he headed out into the late afternoon warmth. 

When Jack arrived at the diner for his pre-shift briefing, Sousa looked entirely too happy. Jack saw him almost every day, at one surveillance hand-off or both. Besides Carter and Sousa, only one or two trusted agents were allowed to make contact with him, a necessary precaution for staying in the black. Half the time he ate at the diner alone, only to find a briefing packet left in his car. 

“Solved it, huh?” Jack asked as he sat. Sousa startled and looked warily at Jack, like he was annoyed he was so easy to read. 

“Yes. That visitor you recorded two nights ago proved the key.”

“Bully. Breakfast is on you then,” Jack said, settling into the booth. Sousa didn’t have any papers with him, a signal that Jack wouldn’t be assigned to something else right off. Normally he’d leave, more than happy to entertain himself in what little down time was granted. 

Jack suspected he was about to get more time to fill than he knew what to do with. He pretended not to see the knowing look Sousa was giving him. Instead he looked around the diner, bustling with shift workers getting fueled for the day. 

“I can tell you want to say something,” Jack said after the waitress dropped off their orders. “If you’re going to suggest again that I re-establish my identity, I wouldn’t bother.”

“We’re considering the opposite, actually. After the new year, I think we’re going to need someone overseas.”

“That sounds juicy. What’s the role?” Sousa shook his head.

“We’re still establishing the cover. It has to be someone with no clear ties to the SSR and someone of your--background.” Jack’s eyebrows raised. 

“Time to play the spoiled rich boy again? I wish you’d come up with something a little more interesting.”

“It’s not that,” Sousa said shortly. “The SSR is at a little bit of a disadvantage since we recruited so heavily from the War Department. That new CIA outfit is recruiting entirely from the Ivy League, and Whitehall from Oxford and Cambridge. We need someone who can play ball in that league. Blend in… or just stand out in the right way.”

“You know I’m up for it,” Jack said. “Why the soft pitch?”

“Figured you might need some time to settle your affairs in L.A. We expect you to be gone for some months.”

“Sure. When is the briefing?” 

“A week from today.” That would be the other shoe dropping. It was a good thing that Jack had gotten a clue this morning. Even Sousa would notice something was amiss if he didn’t comment about the briefing being on Christmas.

“This isn’t some scheme of Peggy’s to get me out to socialize again, is it? Where is this affair?”

“We’re having dinner at Stark’s. The briefing is real, though. When the cover is ready, you have a swanky New Year’s Eve party to attend. It’s a short timeline.”

“Short enough that you’re compromising your first Christmas with Peggy?” Jack couldn’t help but poke. “You’re quite the pair of busy little bees. How do you two even find time to fool around?” 

Sousa gritted his teeth. “We’re having Christmas Eve alone. And Christmas is about family, Jack. Even when they’re irritating.” 

“That’s some portrait we’d make. Three SSR agents, one presumed dead. An English butler and wife, a millionaire and his menagerie, plus whichever starlet wannabe he’s dating this month.”

“Samberly’s invited too.”

“Sheesh. Taking in all the strays, are you?”

“Only the ones we like in spite of ourselves. If you weren’t coming, you’d have turned me down already.”

Sousa was right, of course. It’s not like he wanted to spend the holiday alone, and the spread at Stark’s sounded more enticing than picking up some hard-up, homesick aspiring actress. There was just one problem.

“Dammit. I’m gonna have to buy gifts, aren’t I?”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Paeonia for quick beta services.
> 
> Yeah, I'm probably going to write more Thompson.
> 
>  [Suggested Reading Order for my canon compliant post S2 fics](http://katiekeysburg.tumblr.com/post/162241330814/ever-wonder-what-order-my-post-season-2-agent)


End file.
